


we became such strangers now, fading out

by Red Dragon (Red_Dragonn)



Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One), Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Communication, Emotionally Repressed, Gen, Happy Ending, Lack of Communication, Post-Canon Fix-It, Post-Transformers: Requiem of the Wreckers, like... eventually, two emotionally repressed robots get stuck alone on a spaceship together for a month or so
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-07
Updated: 2021-03-07
Packaged: 2021-03-13 19:21:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,102
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29905869
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Red_Dragonn/pseuds/Red%20Dragon
Summary: Instead of heading through the portal at the end of Requiem of the Wreckers, Springer repairs Impactor and puts the two of them on a ship back to Cybertron, and then he spends his time avoiding Impactor like the plague. This is a story about that.
Relationships: Springer & Impactor (Transformers)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 12





	we became such strangers now, fading out

**Author's Note:**

  * For [YvannaIrie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/YvannaIrie/gifts).



> Major thanks to YvannaIrie for supplying the prompt that kickstarted this fic, beta-reading it, and also having the most excellent conversations and headcanons about the wreckers in general! You should all be following [their Dreamwidth](https://yvannairie.dreamwidth.org/) and reading their meta if you enjoy Wreckers content, because this is the top tier stuff my guys.
> 
> Side note that I don't know how to title fics, so instead of a single-word title, I'm experimenting with lines from songs. This song is "I Wish" by 10 Years.

They didn’t really talk to each other, after those last miserable days on Earth. Springer had gone and pulled Impactor out of the wreckage, unable to explain why he was doing it to even himself, and had patched him back together. He hadn’t really done the most spectacular repair job, maybe, but that didn’t matter. Why would it? Turned out he wasn’t able to let go.

To his credit, Impactor hadn’t given him slag for it. When he’d onlined again, he asked Springer why, and Springer—well. Springer had absolutely no answer for him. He’d stood there silently with his mouth open for a solid few minutes before Impactor just weakly shook his head and passed right back out again. 

And after that he didn’t bring it up. 

Springer still couldn’t come up with an answer, anyway, so it was probably for the best. 

It took Impactor a solid couple of Earth weeks for the patch job on his torso to settle in, and after that another one for him to get up and walking again, but after that it was back to… It wasn’t really business as usual; it couldn’t really be  _ business as usual _ with only Springer and Impactor on the ship, but if there had been a few more people padding out the crew he might have called it business as usual. As it was, the ship was running just fine, and they did all the things they needed to do to keep it that way without exchanging more than a few stilted pleasantries to each other. 

It was only the two of them, so there wasn’t a point to making duty cycles, or any kind of task roster; the ship was small and in good condition and it didn’t have too much that needed doing on it. Besides, he and Impactor were both coming off the tail ends of Earth assignments. They probably weren’t used to working on normal schedules anyway. So Springer would’ve thought. But the two of them settled into a routine almost like duty cycles anyway. It was a good excuse to not have to talk to each other, and the energon only needed to be prepared once to feed the both of them. They’d each take a cube, and then Impactor would vanish into his hab with it, and Springer would drink his in the commissary, and that was that. 

Springer wasn’t really  _ happy _ about it, but it was comfortable, in a strange sort of way. He’d spent so much time on Earth with Verity, and he loved her as much as he loved any of his brothers-in-arms, but she was talkative and loud, and the quiet was nice. Meditative, in a way. Left him a lot of time to sit with his thoughts. 

Dealing with Impactor wasn’t comfortable at  _ all _ , not by a long fragging shot, but there wasn’t anything to be done for  _ that _ . He’d decided against leaving him to die. He wasn’t going to fight him. And he didn’t know how to talk to him without fighting him. 

They barely had anything to fight over but the past, now, anyway. Springer hadn’t made  _ peace _ with that—how could he, after centuries of dealing with Impactor’s memory like an open sore?—but he was tired. The war was over. They were heading back to Cybertron, which for the first time in his entire life was at peace. Fighting over the past seemed stupid, in that light. At some point it had to  _ end _ . 

Of course, every time he really thought about Pova, he’d get angry all over again, about how their ideals were corrupted and the goals were warped and how it all was so fragging  _ pointless _ at the end of the day anyway, but there was a strange taste on his glossa making that righteous anger feel a little less righteous, these days. Maybe he wasn’t so perfect either. Back on Earth, he’d done the same, sort of—but that was different. 

It was easier to just not think about it too hard. Easier to just let it lie. So he did. The ship would reach Cybertron in a little under an Earth month, just one more cycle away, and then he’d go off and find some of the people he hadn’t seen in ages, and Impactor would vanish off to get involved with some other horrible conspiracy because he couldn’t let go of the war. And Springer would stop thinking about it, at that point. Just put it out of his head and focus on anything else.

And so passed a few days. 

Then instead of picking his cube of energon off the commissary counter at the end of a day and disappearing off into the shadows of his hab for the night, Impactor walked in, as he had for every day since he’d started walking again, and picked his cube up just the same, but then he sat down stiffly at the commissary table. Springer was already sitting; and so he did not get up. If he got up, that would be like running away, and Springer was not going to run away. 

They drank their cubes in silence. It was not a comfortable silence. Not a companionable silence. There was a tension in the air that was all but palpable. You could cut it with a knife. Impactor spent the entire meal staring into his cube like it held the secrets of the universe. Springer did, too, more to avoid staring than anything else. He wasn’t—there wasn’t any  _ reason _ for him to stare, not really, but there wasn’t anything else to look at, was there? The table? His servos? But they weren’t speaking.

Impactor pushed back his chair suddenly and got up, draining the last dregs of his cube. He glanced at Springer, nodded slightly, and then wordlessly rinsed his cube in the sink and vanished off down the hall. Springer sat there for a few more minutes, and then he finished his cube off himself and did the same. 

He went off to recharge, after, and the next day came, as days were wont to do. 

Springer fussed with the flight path a little, topped up the full fuel canisters in the engines, spent a couple hours polishing things that didn’t need to be polished, and generally wasted his time. Having so much empty time and nothing to do with it was strange and starting to grate on him, a little. His thoughts kept drifting back to Kup. Drifting back to the past. All of it was weighing on his mind. It’d be easier if he had something to do with himself, but as it was he was alone with his processor on a ship full of nothing that needed doing, and he was doing a full day of it somehow anyway. 

Later that evening again Impactor sat at the table across from Springer. And just as before, they avoided eye contact and did not speak. It was obvious Impactor had something to say; he kept looking up at Springer and looking away. Springer found himself doing the same almost unconsciously. If they were going to fight, though, Springer would rather they did it on Cybertron. Rather they weren’t trapped in each other’s company in the fallout. He figured Impactor probably felt the same. Had to be why he wasn’t just  _ saying _ anything. Besides, he didn’t really  _ want _ to fight. He didn’t think Impactor did either. But surely it couldn’t go any other way. 

Impactor finished his cube and set it down on the tabletop and pushed it around a little with his harpoon. Springer waited for him to get up, but he didn’t move. Springer didn’t either. He sipped at his cube a little more. Eventually his cube ran out, and he sit his down on the table, too. And then they were both just sitting there. Across from each other. In a tense silence that neither of them seemed willing to break. 

After a very, very long silence, Impactor finally looked up at Springer. Springer looked down at the table. 

“I’m not angry with you,” Impactor finally said. He didn’t really  _ do _ hesitance, not Impactor, but there was a hesitance to the words nonetheless. 

Springer wasn’t sure what to say to that. He’d been  _ right _ , every time they’d fought… but he was fragging tired of fighting. “…right.”

“About Earth,” Impactor said. “I meant on Earth. Things went about as well as they could’ve gone. I’m not angry.”

“What would you have to be angry about? I didn’t do anything you didn’t ask for.”

Impactor let out a laugh that held absolutely no humor to it. “You’ve been avoiding me.”

“So have you.”

Impactor looked down at the table again, and then prodded his cube with his harpoon. It tipped over, clattering loudly on the table. Springer looked down at it, surprised, and then looked back at his own cube. They sat there for a moment, in silence again. 

“I can’t just…  _ forget _ everything,” Springer finally said. 

“I didn’t say anything about—”

“I didn’t say you did. I’m just saying.”

Impactor grunted. 

Springer looked back down at the table, and then stood up. “Hand me your cube?”

“Yeah,” Impactor said, and handed it to him. Springer went over to rinse them both out in the sink. By the time he turned around again, Impactor had already left the room. 

And that was that, he figured. Springer considered the room for a moment, and then dried his servos off and went off to recharge. 

Impactor didn’t say anything to him for the next couple days, and neither did Springer. He kept thinking about it, though. Instead of chewing over the war his processor his processor had latched onto that conversation like a turbofox with a bone, turning it over and over in his head. So what if Impactor wasn’t mad? He wasn’t mad about Earth either. Except, he  _ was,  _ he was fucking furious about some of Impactor’s choices, but he wasn’t—he wasn’t  _ actively angry _ , really. When it came down to it, at least. He  _ disagreed _ , he thought Impactor’s actions were obviously awful and his choices were terrible and his goals were reprehensibly and the whole thing was a stupid, shortsighted and all-around just  _ bad _ pile of shuttlescrap, but there was a difference between thinking all that and being actually, substantially,  _ angry _ . The line was a fine one, but Primus, he’d been angry with Impactor for half the war over Pova. And everything else was just Pova, falling out, slowly, on a different alien planet with different aliens catching the flack for it. Same as the entire war was, on a smaller scale, really. And besides, being angry about Pova wasn’t changing anything. 

Verity was making up with her family now, he thought. She said she was going to. Said it was a long time coming, when he talked to her last. And here he was on a ship with the closest thing he had left to a mentor, and the two of them were silently avoiding each other and had been for the entire trip. 

And eventually it wound up that he and Impactor got to the commissary at the same time. Springer wordlessly filled him up a cube and sat down at the table, and Impactor gave him an odd look and sat down at the other end. “Thanks.”

“Yeah,” Springer said, and went to drink his energon quietly. 

“We’ll be getting to Cybertron soon.”

Springer nodded. That was true. There was probably only another five or so Earth days left on the trip. Practically a blink of an eye. Except Springer had recalibrated his chronometer so he’d be working on Earth time, and now that he was thinking about it it seemed quite a long time away, actually. Come to think of it, Impactor must have, too. They’d both been working on twenty-four hour slices of time, even though the ship was set to a Cybertronian day length and if the computer had generated duty cycles  _ for _ them they’d have been working on seventy-or-so hour long slices instead. 

“Seems like a long time, after Earth.”

Impactor grunted. “Guess it does.”

Springer took a long sip of his cube, and while he was still swallowing Impactor set his cube down hard on the table and glanced away out the window. “I know you aren’t gonna forgive me, but…”

Springer waited. Impactor never finished the sentence. He just picked his cube back up. He didn’t even go to drink it; he just sat there holding it in his hand. 

“I’d  _ like _ to put it behind us,” Springer said, after a long, long while. He wasn’t really sure what he was saying, in all honesty. Didn’t bother thinking too hard about the words, or else they wouldn’t come out at all. “I don’t  _ want _ to hold it against you, but. Primus, Impactor.”

Impactor grunted. “Not like your hands were clean after.”

“You know, after it was all over. On Earth, that is. On Earth. Before I dug you out and sent Verity home, but after we’d gotten rid of Overlord—”

“You never did tell me how you managed that.”

“I, uh, we sent him back in time to kill Megatron in an alternate dimension.”

“…huh.”

“Tarantulas died, too. Nothing I could do about that. So it was just me and Verity and this gateway to any dimension. Or…maybe this one. I really don’t think it was. We’d see more…” he trailed off.

“More what?”

“I don’t know, more…  _ more _ . We’d’ve heard from Overlord again if he were still here and had jumped into the past before the war started, for sure.”

“Oh. Yeah.”

“So it had to be a gateway to an alternate dimension. And I seriously thought about, you know, finding some point before the Wreckers came together and going back to see if I could keep it from going off the rails.”

“But you didn’t.”

“It wouldn’t have changed anything. I’d be running into another version of the war just on the hopes that I could try and change something. Verity, she, uh… she was the one that talked me out of it. Said she’d be going home to make up with her, uh, her… human relatives, kind of like her mentors, you know, and. She said I should see about doing the same.”

“Kind of missed your shot for that with Tarantulas, huh.”

“And Kup is dead, and I don’t want anything to do with Prowl.”

“Can’t exactly blame you for wanting to steer clear of him.”

“Sounds like he’s gone off the rails anyway. Shacked up with the Constructicons or something.”

“Nah, that’s gotta be bullshit. Not a chance in Pit. He hates the ‘cons more than we do.”

Springer shrugged. “The point is, you’re the last. You know. Last person I have.”

Impactor grunted. “Yeah.”

“And we’re coming up on Cybertron.”

“Yup.”

“And I don’t know what to do about that.”

“I guess not hiding from me like an overgrown sparkling is a step up.”

“You went and hid in your hab with your energon for like a month. If anyone was acting like a sparkling—”

“You coulda talked to me at  _ any point _ during the day instead of pretending to be working on the ship.”

Springer shook his head. “No, no. At least some of this is on your shoulders, too.”

“I, well. Uh. Yeah, alright. That’s fair.”

Springer sipped his energon, biting back a smile against his will.

“So what do you  _ want?” _

“I don’t know,” Springer said. “I just want things to go back to how they used to be. Before everything went bad.”

“Been a long time since then,” Impactor said, blinking at him. “Lot of shit’s happened.”

“Yeah.”

Impactor was quiet for a long minute, staring at the starfield out the window. “But I wouldn’t mind that, either. Sure as hell sounds better’n us both getting on Cybertron and splitting off into different directions and not talking for the next six vorns ‘cause you’re too afraid to come talk to me.”

“Like you’d be any better.”

“I’d come find you eventually. I did keep running into you back on Earth.”

“You weren’t  _ looking for me _ on Earth. We were both just… in the wrong places at the right times.”

“We’d keep running into each other on Cybertron then, too.”

Springer thought about that. “Probably would’ve kept decking each other and then walking away.”

“Probably.”

Impactor leaned back and took a sip from his cube, and Springer found himself lapsing into silence again, too. It wasn’t nearly as tense as it had been for the rest of the pits-damned trip. 

“I’m… glad you didn’t go and trap yourself in an alternate timeline,” Impactor said, after a long moment, and went to rinse out his cube. 

“…thanks.”

Impactor grunted and then set his cube in the cabinet and headed off down the hall to his hab.

They spent the next few days talking about good, safe topics. Nothing important, nothing of worth, but it was…  _ nice _ . 

But Cybertron came all too soon.

They landed a bit ahead of schedule, in four days instead of five, in a nearly-empty flat plain in what had once, ages ago, been part of the outlying hills around Tetrahex. Nowadays it was a barren, rust-spotted desert interspersed with deep cracks off into the horizon, and no one seemed to be around for miles. There was a glow on the horizon near where New Iacon was, and another in the east that Springer couldn’t put a name to. 

He took his personal effects from his room and headed off the ship, and found Impactor at the bottom of the ramp looking bored. “I expected more.”

“We’re in the middle of nowhere. I think this is the best we could’ve expected.”

Impactor grunted. “Still would’ve expected some kind of attention.”

Springer shrugged. “Guess, uh. Guess I’ll be seeing you.” 

Impactor scuffed his toes in the dust on the ground. “Guess so. Where, uh, where are you heading?”

Springer shrugged again. “Planning on heading off to New Iacon. Not really sure what I’m gonna do from there.”

“Come with me,” Impactor said, suddenly. 

“Well where are  _ you _ going?”

“Don’t know. Gonna poke around what used to be of Tarn. It’s not about having a better plan, just. Figure it’ll be for the better.”

Springer blinked at him. “Better than what?”

“Better’n us splitting up and driving off in opposite directions again.”

Springer leaned against the side of the ship. “Guess it will be.”

Impactor looked at him for a long second, and then he smiled. 

**Author's Note:**

> now there's art to go along with it! :3


End file.
